When Sun announced its Open Cloud Platform today, developers around the world with an interest in cloud computing benefited from the arrival on the scene of a powerful new force in favor of cloud architecture that is both interoperable and open. According to Sun's Sr. VP of Cloud Computing, David Douglas, what Sun envisions is "a world of many clouds - public and private - that are open and interoperable" and this paradigm shift away from proprietary clouds is a recurring theme in the infrastructure industry.

But a world of multiple clouds is not without its complications. Thorsten von Eicken, for example, the CTO of RightScale, says that one burning question he's hearing right now is "How do you actually deploy an app across multiple clouds?"

Meantime Reuven Cohen, Founder & Chief Technologist at Toronto-based Enomaly Inc., considers the issue so important he helped to start the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (with its accompanying online forum, Cloud Interoperability Magazine, saying that the industry needs to create an open unified cloud interface and achieve the unification of existing IT and cloud based infrastructures (a.k.a. hybrid computing).

Both Cohen and von Eicken, along with a welter of their industry peers with special knowledge of interop and other related issues, are featured speakers at SYS-CON's upcoming 3-day Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in New York (March 30-April 1, 2009), where many of the sessions reflect this view that we are moving into an era of multiple types of cloud, public and private, open and proprietary - a world of "many clouds."

As for Douglas, he is one of three distinguished Keynote Speakers at the event and will be keynoting exactly on this issue of how enterprise IT operations can best take advantage of the emerging world of multiple clouds to achieve the cost and flexibility advantages that cloud computing allows while maintaining control of their IT infrastructure.

Another keynoter, IBM's Dr Kristof Kloeckner - who is CTO of Enterprise Initiatives and VP of Cloud Computing Platforms in the IBM Software Group - is presenting a keynote address that will talk about the standards required for interoperability between clouds. IBM, like Sun, sees the world as being a mix of clouds - of private and public clouds, for example.

Among the 102 differerent breakout and general sessions on offer in New York (view Schedule here), the main sessions focused on these inter-related issues include:

Cloud Computing Expo 2009 East is a three-day event, which is being held at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. It features a top-notch lineup of speakers from the leading industry players of the main layers of the Cloud ecosystem - the infrastructure players, the platform providers, and those offering applications and services. The lineup includes, among others:

Cloud Computing News Desk brings the latest industry news related to the Cloud paradigm of massively scalable IT resources and capabilities delivered as a service using Internet technologies. For up to date news on the International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series, the easiest way is to follow it on Twitter.

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Cloud Expo

Cloud Computing & All That
It Touches In One Location Cloud Computing - Big Data - Internet of Things
SDDC - WebRTC - DevOps
Cloud computing is become a norm within enterprise IT.

The competition among public cloud providers is red hot, private cloud continues to grab increasing shares of IT budgets, and hybrid cloud strategies are beginning to conquer the enterprise IT world.

Big Data is driving dramatic leaps in resource requirements and capabilities, and now the Internet of Things promises an exponential leap in the size of the Internet and Worldwide Web.

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Add the key topics of WebRTC and DevOps into the mix, and you have three days of pure cloud computing that you simply cannot miss.

Delegates will leave Cloud Expo with dramatically increased understanding the entire scope of the entire cloud computing spectrum from storage to security.

Cloud Expo - the world's most established event - offers a vast selection of 130+ technical and strategic Industry Keynotes, General Sessions, Breakout Sessions, and signature Power Panels. The exhibition floor features 100+ exhibitors offering specific solutions and comprehensive strategies. The floor also features two Demo Theaters that give delegates the opportunity to get even closer to the technology they want to see and the people who offer it.

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